You need to spend more time in your garden. Why do you ask? Surely the pursuit of a career, actually earning money to upgrade your living situation and get to the top of your field is more important that idly wasting time lounging around in your garden as your cat does?

Career considerations are important of course, and in that pursuit, it can be difficult to fully switch off your working brain. If this is you, your garden is calling out for you more than ever. Many people don’t spend enough alone time or time with their family in their garden. They see it as a beautiful fixture of the house, a nice place to decorate and maybe plant flowers once in awhile, but not a place to truly unwind and feel free within.

If you run a family, it’s not hard to imagine that any free time you do have is soaked up in the maintenance, socially and physically, of that family. Interestingly though, giving yourself time to reflect, even just a few minutes every day, can help you be more present in your daily life, and more available to your family members. This allows you to identify your relative's needs and wants much more clearly than when your head is filled with career or budgetary planning.

This is what nature can afford you:

Nature Relaxes

It’s scientifically valid. Nature can help reduce your levels of cortisol to a significant degree, and this has tremendous benefits on your overall health and positive cognitive functioning. This ability to natural rest in yourself and focus is only enhanced by having your own space to do it in, free from private eyes.

Here you can allow all of your weird and intricate personality quirks to show themselves in full light, and that is nothing but healthy. Consider adding a garden feature such as a water feature or pond complete with adequate hygienic pond filters, and you’ll have a beautiful and serene picture to lose yourself in during those extended periods of self-reflection. Speaking of reflection:

Nature Reflects

Being in your garden alone will give you the headspace necessary to assess how you’re doing so far in your life. Those little niggles that might have been eating away at you in the form of suppressed responsibilities or worries about the future can be observed and thought through in the bright light of day here. This is always healthy.

Nature Allows You To Appreciate

If you live in a relatively suburban area, it’s easy to get lost in the flow of daily modern life and the fast-paced culture we inhabit. As Ferris Bueller said “Life moves pretty fast. If You don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.”

This is why spending time in your garden space is so valuable. Nature moves at its own pace and doesn’t require you to allow it to do so. There are no scheduling or meeting arrangements required to allow your leaves to blow in the wind. This is why spending time here is so relaxing. It can free you from the crazy duties that you’ve piled upon yourself in the pursuit of a better life and only sit with your life where it is. This is why some form of water feature is important as well because you’ll have the audible sound of relaxing, lazy water to punctuate the slow, free moving of the life in your garden.

A garden might seem like a dead area, a place to be molded and shaped to your will. You will find, however, that the longer you stay there, the more alive your garden becomes. Before long you’ll be making your garden reflection time a highlight of your week, and will add many home improvements to keep increasing its beauty often.